Match Of The Past: Blackpool FC

We continue our series of archive videos of the clubs of the Football League Championship this morning with Blackpool. Amongst the giants of the immediate post-war era, Blackpool entered a steady decline in the 1970s before recovering their composure and eventually finding their way back into the Premier League, and last season they were only narrowly beaten in the play-off final for a place back in the top division by West Ham United. Our six matches come from the years between 1953 and 2001, and we start – perhaps unsurprisingly – with one of the most famous matches in the clubs history, the 1953 FA Cup Final at Wembley against Bolton Wanderers, a match which became known as The Matthews Final in spite of Stan Mortenson becoming the only player in the history of the competition to score a hat-trick in an FA Cup Final.

Our next three matches all come from the 1970s. First up is a home match at Bloomfield Road against Queens Park Rangers in the Second Division from April 1970, and this is followed by a home derby match from three years later, again at Bloomfield Road, against Preston North End. Finally – for this decade – we have a match against a Fulham side containing George Best from the Second Division in November 1976. By the middle of the 1990s, the club had spent two periods on the bottom division of the Football League, but by the middle of the 1990s the club was back in the third tier of the league, and our penultimate match features a trip to The County Ground to play Swindon Town in November 1995. Last but not least, we’re off to Cardiff for the end of the 2000/01 season, and the Division Three play-off final against Leyton Orient from the Millennium Stadium.

About The Author

Ian began writing Twohundredpercent in May 2006. He lives in Brighton. He has also written for, amongst others, Pitch Invasion, FC Business Magazine, The Score, When Saturday Comes, Stand Against Modern Football and The Football Supporter. Ian was the first winner of the Socrates Award For Not Being Dead Yet at the 2010 NOPA awards for football bloggers.